ABSTRACT
This chapter is focused on the concepts of electric force and electric field. It starts with a description of the property of charge. After introducing Coulomb’s Law, several examples of computing the electrostatic force in one and two dimensions are provided. Care is taken to extend the same technique developed in the first few chapters to this new force. The concept of the electric field is then introduced and examples similar to those for the electrostatic force are presented and the same techniques are applied in the examples. A brief discussion of the comparison of the gravitational and electrostatic forces is provided and then Gauss’ Law is discussed as a geometric interpretation of the electric field in the area of a charge distribution. There is a short appendix to this chapter in which the four forces of nature are discussed.
